Day 9: from Holbrook, AZ to Grand Canyon, AZ

2580 miles driven so far

Today we had ahead of us a marathon journey, which would take us to two of the most mythical nature features of North America. For that, we had to abandon Route 66 which continued its way towards West and head instead up North. A "small" diversion of over 500 miles.
On our way up to the North we were crossing Indian nation lands, we saw several reservations scattered around, and also lots and lots of horses.

But the most significative sign of indians living there was the abundance of gifts, jewelery and indian craft shops, almost one every mile.

We were driving across remote lands, and therefore houses and signs of human life were rare. Indeed most of the houses we saw were pre-built as we imagine that getting all the materials and builders in the area might be difficult, much easier to buy the whole house built and furnish. We only had four hours of driving to discuss these matters : ).

At noon we reached yet another state, Utah, and with it our first destination: the "Monument Valley". This is a landscape that we have all seen in classical western films. Contrary to what these films show, this place is now owned by the Indians, and they manage the tourism there.

 Even as we were still getting nearer the sights were already quite impressive, and you could almost see John Wayne running after the Indians.

Once we got inside, we took a path of 17 miles that allowed us to see most of the valley.

Actually, we could not finish the circuit because a film was being shot and they didn't want cars driving around, but we didn't find out which film it was : (
The sights there were as breathtaking as driving on the non paved truck. The car ended up with dust everywere that now we are carrying with us everywere. Now we are the owners of the dustiest car of the whole parking lot, it is a good thing it is not really ours.

The experience of being among these huge rocks in the middle of the dessert was truly unique.
After visiting this magnificent place we headed West towards the second nature marvel of the day "The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River", which needs no further introduction.

The second part of the journey took us another 3,5 hours driving across a semi-desert landscape, with not really to much to see around.

Finally, we got to the Grand Canyon just before sunset, so we were able to experience the sun setting over the huge canyon.

Unfortunately, this meant that we didn't have more time to see much more, so we had to leave it for the next day. We also found that the weather had taken a turn to the worst, from the 30 ºC heat we had in the Monument Valley at noon to the barely 15 ºC in the canyon.
Time then to go to bed and prepare to another long journey tomorrow.